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Gotye - Blood And Gotye

Author: Daniel Crichton-Rouse

Friday, 26 October 2007

While he’s responsible for 2006’s most acclaimed record Like Drawing Blood and the mastermind behind its ARIA award nominated companion remix LP Mixed Blood, Gotye playing live is still something of a rare treat. This week you can catch him in Sydney though, and Daniel Crichton-Rouse is very excited.Mid-year you embarked on a very highly anticipated tour. What were the logistics behind planning the tour-Firstly, deciding on a line-up. That took me the better part of six months, and various experiments with different lineups or one-man show ideas. Eventually I decided on a nine-piece band and this created a lot of difficulties in terms of organising everyone’s time for rehearsals and shows. Of course, accommodating, flying and paying performance fees for such a large band was a heavy investment, so I’m really glad that we could keep the tickets for the tour low considering the scale of the production and venues.

You’re touring overseas at the moment with your other group The Basics. What about Gotye touring internationally- Do you see that being a feasible option in the near future-I’ve recently licensed my Gotye album (with some changes to tracklisting and samples) to a great indie label in the UK. They have a relationship with a fairly large Japanese indie label, so on the back of releases in Europe and Japan in 2008 I hope to tour to various parts of the globe. I wouldn’t be able to afford to do that with the Gotye mini orchestra, so I need to develop a one-man show along the lines of what DJ Shadow does with samplers/decks/visuals etc. I’ll use a few more instruments though, like drums, piano and live vocals.

Have you been surprised by the reaction to Mixed Blood- Is it true the idea for the record came about because lots of people were asking to remix your songs-I credit Peter Pasqual at Creative Vibes, my CD distributor in Australia, for suggesting the idea that I do a remix album. It took a while to put it together (about a year in the end), but the final tracklist for Mixed Blood is a combination of tracks I commissioned from artists whose work I like, and other tracks that came from random people sending me demos of remix ideas.Do you have additional tracks that may see the light of day soon- Are you working on another album perhaps-I’d love to say I had new material on the boil, but aside from a few instrumental ideas, I haven’t had a spare second to write new music for either Gotye or The Basics because both those acts have been so busy with independently releasing records, touring and trying to cash flow rent/bills etc. while making a transition from someone who was hobbying with music into doing it more full-time.

With future releases, do you think you’ll still work by yourself or would you consider working with others-In a way, I consider sampling as a method of working with others. But I’ll definitely work with other ‘live’ people also, to play parts on future tracks, help me with production ideas, guide me with mixing the final tracks. Although I’ve put most stuff together on Gotye releases myself, there are invaluable contributions from friends (musicians and/or vocalists) and technical people like Franc Tetaz who shaped and realised the mix-sound of Like Drawing Blood.

Finally, Salmonella Dub are also on the Sounds In The Grounds bill. Any desire to get them up on stage during Puzzle With A Piece Missing- Wouldn’t that would work brilliantly-!Nice idea. I wish there was time to invite them and to organise a get together. Perhaps I should ask them to all man a delay pedal on each channel of the mixing desk. Then they can dub out whatever me and the mini orchestra do on stage… That would be wild.